Atlanta, GA — For over a decade SafeMinds has claimed that the CDC manipulated data to show no link between vaccines and autism. But at least for one study, the rumors were put an end.

In a statement, William Thompson, Ph.D. acknowledged that he and his co-authors “omitted statistically significant information” linking the MMR vaccine to an increased risk of autism in a 2004 study. An independent reanalysis of the same data suggests that African American males have a 340% increased risk of autism if they received the vaccine prior to 36 months of age. Thompson also admitted to a cover-up of the increased risk, stating, “Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” says Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN, Vice President of SafeMinds. “We have found problems with every result generated by the CDC claiming no autism-vaccine link. Sadly, their studies were utilized by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to deny restitution to over 5000 families whose children developed autism after vaccines.”

In 2004, CDC researcher Thomas Verstraeten published a study examining the mercury preservative thimerosal that had similar protocol manipulations. The first run of the raw data obtained by SafeMinds showed that children were 7.6 to 11.4 times more likely to have autism if they had high exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines compared to no exposure. Four alterations of the data occurred until the final publication showed no statistically significant findings.